


Fandom Stocking 2011/12

by cosmic_llin



Category: Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, Sarah Jane Adventures, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Babies, Bets, Blackmail, Breakfast, Cooking, Crossover, Domestic, F/M, Family, Food, Gen, Holodecks/Holosuites, M/M, Multi, Parenthood, Pets, Polyamory, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 05:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles and ficlets written for Fandom Stocking 2011/12 on LiveJournal.</p><p>Odo honours a bet; the balance of power in the TARDIS shifts; it turns out not <i>all</i> the Cardassian voles were destroyed; two countesses take tea together; Luke and Clyde have a baby; Beverly and Jean-Luc enjoy their breakfasts together; Sarah, Harry and the Doctor don't eat properly; Beverly, Deanna and Will go about their day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Bet (Deep Space Nine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eponymous_rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/gifts), [shinyjenni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyjenni/gifts), [Justice_Turtle (Curuchamion)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curuchamion/gifts), [walkthegale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkthegale/gifts), [livii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livii/gifts), [Morgeil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgeil/gifts), [paranoidangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paranoidangel/gifts), [ariestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariestess/gifts).



> Characters do not belong to me, I am making no profit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS for Season 7, since I know a lot of people are watching for the first time lately.

This was entirely his own fault. 'Never bet with Dax' was practically the first rule of life on Deep Space Nine. He had seen countless others learn this lesson the hard way, and he had looked on smugly, certain that it could never happen to him. He had never been a betting man. Betting life-form.

They'd  _mellowed_ him.

All the same, it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't let his guard down. He should have known that the rule would hold true just as much for Ezri as it had for Jadzia, but no, he had let her innocent, slightly bewildered demeanour throw him. She had reeled him in like an Edosian suckerfish. 

He was appalled at himself. Years he'd spent honing his instincts, only to be taken in by a pair of big eyes and a sweet smile. It was intolerable.

What was even more intolerable was his penance for losing the bet. But he was nothing if not honourable. He had bet, he had lost, and he would face the consequences, no matter the loss to his dignity.

(He had appealed to Nerys to get Sisko to forbid it on the grounds that the Chief of Security needed to maintain a certain professionalism, but she had refused.)

So he arrived at work, on time to the second just as he always was. He swore he could hear snickering on the Promenade, but when he looked up he couldn't trace the source of it.

There was no mirror in the security office, at least.

Nerys arrived for their usual morning meeting, balancing two cups of raktajino on a PADD. She nearly dropped them when she saw him. She laughed that laugh that he usually found so delightful. She hurried to the desk to set down the raktajinos so that she could collapse into a chair and surrender entirely to a giggle fit, her eyes dancing, her cheeks turning pink.

She fell out of the chair. He went to help her up and she just kept laughing. Eventually she caught her breath enough to apologise.

'It suits you,' she managed to gasp out.

'You're mocking me,' he said.

She swallowed hard to hold back another guffaw. 'Of course I am!' she said. 'Oh, Odo, I'm sorry. You know I don't think any less of you for it. And it's only until the end of your shift, and then you can put your normal hair back.'

He caught sight of his enormous, luridly purple beehive in the shiny surface of her PADD. At least it was neat and tidy. That was something.

It was going to be a very long shift.


	2. The Nyssa and Tegan Adventures (Doctor Who/Deep Space Nine)

The TARDIS shook, and its three occupants lurched along with it, clutching whatever they could to keep from falling. The scientist, in her practical-yet-chic velvet jumpsuit, leaned to read the shaking readout in front of her.

'It appears that we've hit a snag in the time vortex,' she said. 'I think we should...'

'Ah!' cried the Doctor. 'Not to worry, I know just what to do! Let me just reverse the polarity...'

The third person struggled to keep her little lavender pillbox hat on with one hand while she used the other to pull her way around the console to see. 'What can I do to help?' she asked.

'Oh, nothing, it's all under control!' the Doctor said, grandly.

The woman with the hat rolled her eyes at the other one. 'What's the point of us even being here if he won't let us help?' she asked.

Her companion shrugged. 'It's not always like this...' she offered.

'But most of the time?'

She bit her lip. 'I suppose so, yes.'

'Well, I've had enough of it!' said pillbox-hat. 'Computer, freeze program!'

The room stopped shaking. The Doctor stopped in the middle of brushing his flopping hair back from his face.

'Come on, Kira!' said velvet-jumpsuit, 'He  _is_ the main character.'

'Why is he? It's  _our_ holosuite program! Jadzia, I appreciate that this is an old favourite of yours, but perhaps we can just... tweak it a little?'

Jadzia shrugged. 'If you like,' she said, not entirely graciously.

* * *

It turned out that removing the main character from a holosuite program was more complicated than they had anticipated. New character cues had to be built in, plotlines amended, dialogue added and removed. It took them weeks, even after they asked Julian for advice.

In the end, Jadzia had to admit that  _The Nyssa and Tegan Adventures_ was worth it. But she still kept the old program on hand, and visited it now and then. After all, without the Doctor, there wouldn't have been an adventure to begin with.


	3. Voles (Deep Space Nine)

'I thought Commander Sisko ordered all of the voles destroyed?'

Odo glared at Quark for a long moment.

'Actually,' he said, 'he ordered that your illegal vole fights should stop and that we should stop them from running around the station. He didn't say anything about keeping one as a pet.'

'A  _pet_ ? You?'

'Is there something funny about that?'

'You're darn right there is! Wait until I tell Dax about this...'

And suddenly Odo was towering over Quark, frowning down at him.

'If Dax, or anyone else, hears about this, then the Orion Syndicate will hear about who it was that undercut them in that quadrotriticale deal last month.'

'Vole? What vole?' Quark said.

Odo nodded, satisfied. Quark tried not to grin.


	4. Two Countesses (Downton Abbey/Vorkosigan Saga)

Two countesses were taking tea together.

Well, alleged tea, anyway. Countess Vorkosigan had brought a hip flask of something that was, she said, 'made from plants, which is close enough.'

Not that Countess Grantham minded, it made a nice change. She felt rather daring, sipping it from the teacups that had been in her husband's family for years.

'It's been a busy year,' she sighed, 'first one of my daughters ran away to marry the chauffeur, and then my eldest broke off her engagement, and now I think she may be engaged  _again_ ... Edith hasn't done anything shocking yet, apart from learning to drive, but I suppose it's only a matter of time...'

Countess Vorkosigan nodded sympathetically. 'You never stop worrying about them, do you?' she said. 'Why, only last year my son broke both his legs and lost out on a chance to attend military academy, then disappeared for several months and showed up again halfway across the galaxy, having somehow become the head of a mercenary fleet, and won a war and dodged a treason charge while foiling a plot against the Emperor.'

Countess Grantham stared.

'Cake?' said Countess Vorkosigan.


	5. Science Project (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

'This is incredible!' Luke said, brandishing a measuring tape at Clyde. 'She's grown since yesterday!'

'Well, of course she has,' said Clyde. 'That's what babies do.'

He scooped her off the changing mat and cuddled her close. 'You're going to grow big and strong, aren't you?' he cooed.

'I've also noticed an increase in her ability to focus on objects when they're close to her face,' Luke said, writing furiously in the baby journal. 'And her appetite seems to be increasing exponentially. Would you mind holding her for me while I measure her head circumference?'

Clyde rolled his eyes. 'She's our baby, not a science project,' he said.

Luke looked at him. 'What do you mean?'

'Well... just that you could spend a little less time measuring, and a bit more time just enjoying being a daddy.'

'But I  _am_ enjoying it!' Luke protested. 'This  _is_  my way of enjoying it.'

'And I'm glad you are,' said Clyde. 'But you've spent more time in the journal than you have holding her! Come on, take her for a minute.'

Luke put the pen down and took the baby. 

'Watch her head!' Clyde said. 'And don't let her little socks fall off. And make sure she...'

'Is Daddy being a big old silly worry-knickers?' Luke said to the baby.

'I am  _not_ !' Clyde said.

Ten minutes passed. Twenty. 

'All right,' said Clyde. 'You've made your point. Can I hold her again now, please? Please?'

Luke tactfully kept silent as he passed her over.


	6. Something for Breakfast (Star Trek: TNG)

Nobody guessed the real reason they had breakfast together so often. It wasn't because they just  _had_  to see one another before they started work (although that was true), and it wasn't because they'd spent the night together (although sometimes they had).

It was the replicator. 

Beverly hadn't often had replicated food as a child – first on Arvada III, where they hadn't had much of anything, and then on Caldos where a simpler way of life was favoured. Jean-Luc's parents had turned their noses up at the new technology, insisting that replicated food couldn't hold a candle to the real thing.

They were right – but how else could you have oskoid pudding for breakfast one day, plomeek broth the next, Delvan fluff pastries the day after, and salted porridge the day after that, and eat them all at the same table?

Their friends who had grown up with replicators always there didn't understand how magical it was. They felt silly telling anyone else. So they kept it to themselves, and the whole crew wondered, while they worked their way through the replicator's breakfast sub-file, one morning at a time.


	7. Balanced Diet (Doctor Who)

The Doctor is very good at taking them to fascinating planets where the people eat cheese made from the milk of star cows, or cake made from special moss that grows only on 1000-year-old trees, but sometimes Sarah pines for the food she's used to, so whenever they find themselves somewhere halfway sensible, she goes shopping.

The trouble is that she's not very good at it. Harry can cook but he hates to shop, but Sarah can never find anything from the list, she panics and just grabs things and gets out as fast as she can, and so they usually end up eating meals that are a little... unorthodox.

The Doctor loves it. He'll eat tuna and apple fritters, chips and ice cream or pickled onion omelette until the cows come home.

It usually doesn't take long for them to go back to the star milk and moss cake.


	8. Three (Star Trek: TNG)

Will returns from his night shift on the Bridge, and Deanna is already on her way out the door for an early appointment. They kiss on the threshold.

Will undresses and climbs into bed and gently prods a sleeping Beverly, who makes a noise of annoyance and shuffles to make space without even waking.

An hour or so later, the computer plays a tune Beverly hates. She wakes up. She dresses. Will doesn't stir. She arranges the blankets to cover him better before she leaves.

Beverly and Deanna meet to share brunch, gossip, and maple syrup kisses.

When Deanna gets back, Will is getting up. Feeling generous, she replicates him breakfast. They go over some personnel reports while his jazz plays in the background.

Showered and dressed, Will goes to Sickbay to discuss light duties for a crew member who is pregnant. He sits opposite Beverly and tries to distract her from work matters, but she's so professional on duty.

He goes to Ten Forward to listen to the string quartet practice. Beverly goes to the arboretum to talk to Keiko about some soil samples. Deanna has an appointment in the school room to meet the new children who arrived in the personnel transfer last week.

In the evening, Beverly and Deanna visit the Ancient West in the holodeck. Will plays poker with Worf, Data and Guinan. Guinan beats him.

It's late by the time the three of them converge at last in their quarters. They undress, help each other with fastenings, fold clothes, fetch glasses of water, brush their teeth in a crowd around the sink.

They get into bed. Deanna wraps an arm around Beverly's stomach, Beverly puts her head on Will's shoulder. Their feet tangle. Beverly spits a lock of Deanna's hair out of her mouth. Will turns over, and Beverly shifts position and Deanna holds on tighter. They sleep, the three of them.


End file.
